New IS data centre goes live

With the addition of the new Randview data centre to the Internet Solutions network, it says it has reached “the critical mass required to achieve the economies of scale.””

“”Just about everything in the world today works more efficiently based on economies of scale, as provisioning, orchestration systems and services for more clients makes it cheaper,‚”” says Graeme O’Driscoll, Innovation and Technology Manager for Cloud at IS. ‚””With the addition of Randview to our data centre network we have hit the sweet spot in terms of capacity, which means we can start leveraging off of our economies of scale in terms of bulk power supply, space, cooling and human resources.‚””

The Randview data centre has been connected to IS’s other major Johannesburg data centres via a Dark Fibre Africa high speed fibre network, offering IS up to 400GB of bandwidth between data centres. ‚””This basically creates a massive virtual data centre, the scale of which has never been seen in South Africa before,‚”” he says. ‚””The fibre in the ground also allows us to self provision the connectivity requirements for our clients, while our telco agnostic approach also allows customers to break out of the data centre on the network that best suits their needs. This means we can now accommodate anyone who puts a server in our data centre and support them through the numerous peripheral SLA-based managed hosting services we offer.‚””

This fact, coupled with the advanced server technology being used, greener IT solutions and the IS’s more efficient cooling capabilities also enables them to increase the density of the data centre, which makes a fundamental difference in how power is used, and what they can offer customers. ‚””Having more efficient cooling and a better PUE means that the operating costs on a per rack basis is reduced, which can then be passed on to our clients in the form of savings on costs,‚”” continues O’Driscoll.

O’Driscoll also explains that the increase in square meterage to the data centre network also reduces the human capital requirements, to a point, as the management requirements and cost per unit are reduced. ‚””This means that we are able to offer premium managed services at a lower cost, to give customers even more benefit from hosting their services and applications in our data centres,‚”” he says. These reduced costs also means that the SME market can now also afford to make use of and benefit from this advanced data centre technology and expertise, which was previously only accessible to large blue chip corporate clients.

‚””We have now reached the scale in our data centre network that will make a real difference to our business and that of our customers,‚”” states O’Driscoll. ‚””Randview has provided the final piece in the puzzle that allows us to finally realise the full potential of all our investments into our data centre network to date, and makes us one of the most competitive service provider in the African market today,‚”” he concludes.

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